72 Powerful Vivienne Westwood Quotes About Change Through Activism and Fashion
This amazing British fashion designer, business woman and activist is responsible for punk and new wave fashions entering the industry and becoming mainstream. Vivienne Westwood is surely unconventional, outspoken and has not stopped at that, as her merchandise promoted her political causes like Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, climate change and civil rights groups. As an entrepreneur, she went on to successfully establish more than a couple of shops in London before expanding throughout the United Kingdom and then taking the entire world by storm from runways in Barcelona, Rome, Paris and New York to Hollywood, including series and blockbusters. The following collection of famous Vivienne Westwood quotes showcases her multifaceted personality that can be an inspiration to many.
In spite of being from a working class background, this didn’t stop her from studying and becoming a teacher, who simultaneously thought up her own jewellery and later on her own wedding gown. This innovative individual continued to be recognized and awarded quite a few times for her independent collections that represented a statement of her own values. Vivienne Westwood still continues to be the ultimate avant-garde designer today. Her words are definitely food for thought as they cover a wide range of life. Read on to find a variety of quotes by this true icon that will inspire and motivate you, friends and loved ones. Worth watching is also the documentary which encompasses her remarkable story as she still fights to maintain her brand’s integrity, principles and legacy.
Table of Contents
- Short Vivienne Westwood Quotes
- Fashion through Vivienne Westwood Quotes
- Vivienne Westwood Quotes on Climate Change and the Environment
- Inspirational Quotes by Vivienne Westwood
- Vivienne Westwood in Her Own Words
- More Vivienne Westwood Quotes
Short Vivienne Westwood Quotes
- I disagree with everything I used to say. Vivienne Westwood
- You have a more interesting life if you wear impressive clothes. Vivienne Westwood
- The only reason I’m in fashion is to destroy the word conformity. Vivienne Westwood
- I have been asked what would I ban immediately if I could. Advertising. Vivienne Westwood
- The only possible effect one can have on the world is through unpopular ideas. Vivienne Westwood
- I’m not trying to do something different, I’m trying to do the same thing but in a different way. Vivienne Westwood
- I’m not terribly interested in beauty. What touches me is someone who understands herself. Vivienne Westwood
- Fasion is about eventually becoming naked. Vivienne Westwood
- The young need discipline and a full bookcase. Vivienne Westwood
- The sexiest people are thinkers. Vivienne Westwood
- The most erotic zone is the imagination. Vivienne Westwood
- It is not possible for a man to be elegant without a touch of femininity. Vivienne Westwood
- It’s better to look important than sexy. Vivienne Westwood
- You have to go faster than the system. Vivienne Westwood
- I design things to help people to hopefully express their personality. Vivienne Westwood
- My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor. Vivienne Westwood
- Every time I have to look up a word in the dictionary, I’m delighted. Vivienne Westwood
- There’s always a polemic in my clothes. Vivienne Westwood
- It is all about technique. The great mistake of this century is to put inspiration and creativity first. Vivienne Westwood
- Instead of buying six things, buy one thing that you really like. Don’t keep buying just for the sake of it. Vivienne Westwood
- There is so much that people take for granted. Vivienne Westwood
- My biggest criticism is how can people be so easily satisfied? Even people with talent. Vivienne Westwood
- When I’m in the street, the only people I notice are usually at least 70 years old, because they look really stylish. Vivienne Westwood
- The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety. W. Somerset Maugham
Fashion through Vivienne Westwood Quotes
- Buy less. Choose well. Make it last. Quality, not quantity. Everybody’s buying far too many clothes. Vivienne Westwood
- Fashion is life-enhancing and I think it’s a lovely, generous thing to do for other people. Vivienne Westwood
- Fashion is very important. It is life-enhancing and, like everything that gives pleasure, it is worth doing well. Vivienne Westwood
- If you’re too big to fit into fashion, then you just have to do your own fashion. Vivienne Westwood
- My clothes have a story. They have an identity. They have a character and a purpose. That’s why they become classics. Because they keep on telling a story. They are still telling it. Vivienne Westwood
- When we started to do punk, we put all of these things together to create the look of an urban guerrilla – a rebel. Vivienne Westwood
- I don’t feel comfortable defending my clothes. But if you’ve got the money to afford them, then buy something from me. Just don’t buy too much. Vivienne Westwood
- I just use fashion as an excuse to talk about politics. Because I’m a fashion designer, it gives me a voice, which is really good. Vivienne Westwood
- If you wear clothes that don’t suit you, you’re a fashion victim. You have to wear clothes that make you look better. Vivienne Westwood
- People have never looked so ugly as they do today. We just consume far too much. Vivienne Westwood
- I think dress, hairstyle and make-up are the crucial factors in projecting an attractive persona and give one the chance to enhance one’s best physical features. Vivienne Westwood
- It’s true the punk fashion itself was iconographic: rips and dirt, safety pins, zips, slogans, and hairstyles. These motifs were so iconic in themselves – motifs of rebellion. Vivienne Westwood
- I don’t think punk fashion is a specter or overemphasized – it made a big impression, as there had never been anything like it before. Vivienne Westwood
- Wear a towel instead of a coat, it’s very chic. Or your husband’s boxer shorts with a belt, or something from your grandmother. It’s all about do-it-yourself at the moment. Vivienne Westwood
- Why do people think that if you don’t dress up, others will appreciate your beauty more – that style will somehow emanate from you? It’s rubbish. If you dress up it helps your personality to emerge – if you choose well Vivienne Westwood
- In the 18th century, if women wanted to travel and they dressed as a man, people would not look twice. Your clothes said everything. Also there were masters and servants swapping clothes. You could be anything, your clothes told everything! Vivienne Westwood
Vivienne Westwood Quotes on Climate Change and the Environment
- The fight is no longer between the classes or between rich and poor but between the idiots and the eco-conscious. Vivienne Westwood
- If you ask me what I think people should be getting next season, I’ll tell you what I’d like them to buy—nothing. I’d like people to stop buying and buying and buying. Vivienne Westwood
- There is a real connection between culture and climate change. We all have a part to play and if you engage with life, you will get a new set of values, get off the consumer treadmill, and start to think, and it is these great thinkers who will rescue the planet. Vivienne Westwood
- Our economic system, run for profit and waste and based primarily on the extractive industries, is the cause of climate change. We have wasted the earth’s treasure and we can no longer exploit it cheaply. Vivienne Westwood
- We are so conformist; nobody is thinking. We are all sucking up stuff; we have been trained to be consumers, and we are all consuming far too much. Vivienne Westwood
- The main message of Climate Revolution is that climate change is caused by the rotten financial system we’ve got, designed to create poverty and rip off any profits for a small amount of rich people. Meanwhile, it destroys the earth. Vivienne Westwood
- I talk to fashion designers and say I want some money to save the rainforest, and they say, ‘Oh, I agree with you completely Vivienne. Yes, climate change, it’s definitely happening,’ but they don’t feel that they can do anything about it; they don’t even think ‘Well let’s stop it!’ Vivienne Westwood
Inspirational Quotes by Vivienne Westwood
- Intelligence is composed mostly of imagination, insight, things that have nothing to do with reason. Vivienne Westwood
- It’s a philosophy of life. A practice. If you do this, something will change, what will change is that you will change, your life will change, and if you can change you, you can perhaps change the world. Vivienne Westwood
- A status symbol is a book. A very easy book to read is The Catcher in the Rye. Walk around with that under your arm, kids. That is status. Vivienne Westwood
- We have got to change our ethics and our financial system and our whole way of understanding the world. It has to be a world in which people live rather than die; a sustainable world. It could be great. Vivienne Westwood
- You’ve got to invest in the world, you’ve got to read, you’ve got to go to art galleries, you’ve got to find out the names of plants. You’ve got to start to love the world and know about the whole genius of the human race. We’re amazing people. Vivienne Westwood
- The sexiest people are thinkers. Nobody’s interested in somebody who’s just vain with a hole in their head, talking about the latest thing – there is no latest thing. It’s all rubbish. Vivienne Westwood
- Art should never be sociological; it has got to be timeless. It’s got to be your vision and how you can represent the world you see. Vivienne Westwood
- Everyone has a masculine and feminine side; masculine qualities and feminine qualities. We’ve all got these sides to ourselves. And clothes can tell that story. People would think this is very unsympathetic, but I would always say to people, you don’t actually need to go through with an operation, can’t you just be? You are who you are! But then people say to me, “Oh, you’re really dreadful, how would you know?”. Vivienne Westwood
- Everybody should have a fair deal; everybody should have the chance to life in this world. If we were evolved as human beings, we would hopefully be able to alleviate suffering in the world. Vivienne Westwood
Vivienne Westwood in Her Own Words
- I am attracted to people who make this effort in knowing what suits them – they are individual and stylish. Vivienne Westwood
- I didn’t know how a working-class girl like me could possibly make a living in the art world Vivienne Westwood
- I’m different from any other designer, businesswise, in that I’ve built this company up and I own it. I never had business hype behind me to promote my image… My image is real… I have never had marketing people telling me what to do. Vivienne Westwood
- At one time, I was very angry. I even treated fashion like a kind of crusade: you were either with us or against us, that kind of feeling. Now I know we need ideas, not kicking down a door. Vivienne Westwood
- What I remember as a child is that other kids didn’t care about suffering. I always did. Vivienne Westwood
- When I was a little girl you used to learn to sew all the holes in things, darning socks, but nobody mends things anymore. Vivienne Westwood
- I was born during the war and grew up in a time of rationing. We didn’t have anything. It’s influenced the way I look at the world. Vivienne Westwood
- I didn’t consider myself a fashion designer at all at the time of punk. I was just using fashion as a way to express my resistance and to be rebellious. I came from the country, and by the time I got to London, I considered myself to be very stupid. It was my ambition to understand the world I live in. Vivienne Westwood
More Vivienne Westwood Quotes
- I never look at fashion magazines. I find them incredibly boring. To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I’ve got books I need to read. More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have. You know, all those incredible geniuses concentrated their lifetimes’ experiences in books. It’s much better than chattering away to somebody who’s never read anything and knows nothing at all. Vivienne Westwood
- Every time I hear that word, I cringe. Fun! I think it’s disgusting; it’s just running around. It’s not my idea of pleasure. Vivienne Westwood
- There is no hierarchy of values any more. Real progress is due mainly to human genius, and that’s rare, and usually stems from a real elite, from a hierarchy. Vivienne Westwood
- I really don’t like women who try to be men. All these politicians, I think they’re horrendous. We could have a brilliant future, but we have this terrible male vision of destroying everything. They’d better sort themselves out and become more womanly. Vivienne Westwood
- Women fight for democracy and engage in the world. But they shouldn’t try and be copying men and be masculine; they should anchor on the home and build on those fundamentals. Vivienne Westwood
- I do have reasons for what I do. I am a very political person, and I really think if you put these clothes on, you will look like a force to be reckoned with. Vivienne Westwood
- In general: the true artist is always true to his art; the impostor is self-conscious, demonstrating his idea, projecting his theory, his ego, and e.g. the figures of the painter are not borrowed ideas who demonstrate themselves talking, dying, dreaming – they dot it. They are not of themselves and they LIVE! -And the flowers are not showing us how pretty they are, or how weird. They are what they are – Etc.! No invention for the sake of invention! Invention must serve the purpose of art. Vivienne Westwood
- A relationship should be based on friendship. I remember somebody telling me that when I was younger and I just thought, you know, stupid people, with that rubbish. But now I see that that is so important. Vivienne Westwood
- I’m always attracted to people who interest me. They’ve got to be people who are really true to themselves somehow, and who are always trying to do something that makes their life more interesting, or better, or something for somebody else. They’re interested in people. Vivienne Westwood
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Watch this inspiring video about Vivienne Westwood’s Iconic Rubber Dress
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